tempus fugit
by Celia Stanton
Summary: In everything, there is a time and a place. Finally, their time is now.


_Author's Notes: This is a completely unworthy gift for an extraordinary person. Darling Fey, you are one of my favorite people in all the world. You are a blessing in a snarky disguise, and I am so honored to know you. Happy birthday, sweets, and thank you for being you._

_The angels of heaven sound for joy because of Grace and Angele; thanks for the help and support, girls._

_As always, I'd love to hear what you think._

* * *

**8:57**

She arrives, damp from the rain that exploded like fireworks above her as she left her apartment, toes uncomfortable in the unfortunate pair of strappy heels she'd chosen for the day, trying to bat her hair down into some sort of submission – and failing miserably, the pit in her stomach deepening and darkening not unlike the sky hanging over Starling in foreboding as a harbinger of how this day might go.

She tosses her bag on the corner of her desk – or attempts to, anyway, and she slams her eyes shut in frustration as it slides away as quickly as any patience she might have had, clattering to the floor in a resounding _thump._

She helps a once ruthless vigilante take down even more ruthless villains, and yet a Monday morning is getting the better of her.

With a sigh and a shiver as a renegade raindrop escapes from her coat collar and rolls leisurely down her back, she kneels before the bag and its contents scattered uncaringly and haphazardly across the marble floors, much like her patience for the day, despite it being before nine o'clock.

She feels his presence before she physically sees him in her peripheral vision – she never saw him coming and yet she'd follow him into the darkness that has no name – because everything shifts, greys and navies sliding and shrinking away as he approaches. He kneels next to her, and as they do, they silently fix the mess she's made - one day they'll look back and wonder if that wasn't the moment they decided to fix the tangled web they'd managed to weave in between bows sliding off a similar strand – and his hand lands gingerly in the middle of her back, giving her a moment to breathe again.

He is steady and sure in a world that is not, and she takes a moment to let her eyes slide shut – not just because of his touch, but because he is the only one who can slow everything down. She's not sure when she started trusting him with that – somewhere between a bloody back seat and a foundry, like their mission, that had risen from the ashes of the aftermath –but she does, believing in him even more than they do their cause.

There is a story in that moment, a tale of two people and happenstance that has started to quietly pull back its own shroud of secrecy, not unlike his hood, and is slowly revealing itself to be something a little more than mere chance. It's still a thing she cannot name, though, even as the words trip toward her tongue, threatening to detonate like the truth it is.

In everything, there is a time and a place, and though this is not it, it's still a countdown – not to the destruction they willingly face day in and day out, but instead to their rebuilding, the one neither of them expected to have.

She opens her eyes and looks at him, a small smile of thanks curling her mouth up at the corners. He returns the gesture and offers her a hand, reaching for her with the certainty that has saved her time and again the way they're trying to save the city, and they rise together like the survivors they are – and how fitting that their new default is _together_ – and as she's smoothing down the wrinkles and dampness in her skirt, she notices the coffee on the corner of the desk where her bag was supposed to go.

(There's something sort of fitting about that, she'll muse later, because she stopped dealing with normal expectations a hundred lifetimes ago – they are extraordinary, lightning in a bottle, one wrong turn away from _never _instead of _maybe. _ It's why she treasures these small moments, because while they're big enough to be notable, deep enough to leave an impression, they're also small, which on some days is even more important.)

She notices the logo on the cup and her smile widens, a visual dancing across her memory with a lightness similar to the one she's seen in him – even if he doesn't believe it's there – of another Monday morning, of an Oliver Queen who had royally fucked up the night before and an argument that reverberated so loudly off the foundry ceiling that she swears she still hears echoes months later, standing in a small café around the corner from the office, bantering with a barista who was teasing him for not knowing her drink order. Fight crime and saving his family's company he could do, apparently, but remembering how Felicity took her coffee was a little too much to handle.

She laughs outright when she notices a box with six muffins in it; apparently he'd been stumped again as to which one she'd like best.

(She doesn't mind, though; he knows the best and worst parts of her, the ones that sing in sunlight and slink in shadows, and that's the biggest and most important thing of all.)

His grin widens in return, and the coil that had tightened in her stomach since she'd set foot outside that morning begins to unfurl until she can breathe easy again.

(She chooses chocolate chip and he takes the blueberry, but not until after he pinches a piece of her muffin and pops it in his mouth. She rolls her eyes but doesn't stop him - because even now, even then and even when, what's hers is his until it officially becomes _theirs._)

* * *

**1:44**

She gets used to a lot of things during their partnership, that one word that encompasses so many more – including three little words that aren't little in the slightest – the stitches of wounds and time spent weaving together like intersections on a road that may one day lead them out of this stasis; the lies that feel like necessities as they fall off her tongue; the feelings that are quietly and carefully muted in service to the greater good.

The one thing she never gets used to is seeing him nervous.

He can pretty much leap tall buildings in a single step as the Arrow, but there's always a feeling of his father's ghost and his mother's shadow creeping behind him as he tries to walk the line to the boardroom. He did not train for this; did not prepare his body or his mind or his soul for the battles or the war, and there are some days she glances through the glass partition and swears she sees an eight-year-old boy in his father's clothes, his father's _life_, and wonders if they'll ever be able to disarm the powder keg he circles dangerously, the live wire that he is, and allow him to actually _live_.

(He was born into this but not necessarily _for_ this, and it reads as noticeably as the green paint he used to put around his eyes.

Still, he wants to believe, and she _does_, enough for the both of them on the hardest days, and sometimes that's enough.)

They're standing outside a conference room, and he's stoic as ever, but she notices he's picked up her habit of flicking his thumbnail against his middle finger, and though it makes no sound, it still reverberates in her ear – the uncertainty is rolling off him in waves, and he's faltering in the rip tide.

He'd told her once that he relied on her; she hadn't answered in kind, even though the same is rooted in such truth that she reaches for those branches on those hardest days, holding tight to it, to _him_. She takes the steps he cannot, because there is no off-the-clock for that kind of promise – and she doesn't want there to be, because she really is in this to win it; for him, for Sara, for Shado, for Tommy, for the nameless and the faceless whose world had crumbled around them, because whether she liked to admit it or not, the same had threatened to happen to her during the months he was gone – and she reaches for him, physically in a way she tries to avoid, lest she get burned and like it. Her hands go to the tie at his throat and straightening it, knowing that though it may look like she was loosening the knot, she was instead looking at the cracks in the façade, seeing not the fault lines through which he feared they might all fall – though in truth, she'd fallen long ago – but instead the repairs they would make together.

(_Would_; never _could_. She's all in despite not being able to ante up just yet – again, a time and a place for everything.)

She smoothes down his lapels, feeling him take a deep, steady breath. Their eyes lock and she gives him a supportive smile and nod, and watches, satisfied, as he noticeably relaxes.

(She's spent a few bottles of wine wondering what she brought to the team in those violet hours tinged with doubt.

The fact that _her_ hands wield the power in that scenario – pick him up instead of dropping him down as he was so used to doing and having done to him – makes her feel as powerful as he is, though admittedly there have been some nights when she wanted to use her powers to be the best kind bad with him rather than remind him of the good he's capable of doing in the world.

Today, though, this is her most important mission, and she dons her armor and carries the sword, once more into the breach.)

He reaches for her, reaches _back_, and squeezes her bicep. His hand lingers there a moment, and his brow furrows a bit – not in confusion, but in realization – and she wonders if she'll ever really know what's going on in that head of his.

(She hates mysteries, but perhaps he is the one puzzle she is destined never to solve.)

The look disappears as quickly as it arrived, and she hands him the tablet containing the necessary information for his meeting. She gives him another nod of encouragement, and his hand slides down her arm to grasp her fingers for a moment – it soothes as much as it burns, just as she'd always suspected – and though she follows two steps behind, they both know that in actuality, he's at her side.

(He takes her out to a celebratory lunch after the meeting with the board goes even better than either of what was left of the dreamers within them could ever hope, and for a minute, they're just two people laughing over a bottle of Sassicaia they finish despite it only being early afternoon – go rogue all day every day or go home, she thinks, watching the way the sunlight reflects off her wine glass and his comparatively easy smile – and the normalcy is comforting even in its deafening.

She finally deals in _could, _watching him reach out and spear a forkful of the Tiramisu she refuses to feel guilty about ordering, thinking that this feels like possibility, real and true; they could do this.

_Would_, however, is still a little ways off.

The waiting will be worth it.)

* * *

**11:59**

Her bare foot taps in time with the beats from Verdant, loud and strong like the heartbeat she feels beneath her fingers every time she fixes Oliver's tie – that's been happening more and more of late¸and she's got the scars to prove it, but she also knows that for much as he takes, he gives back twice as much – as it sits elevated on the corner of her workstation in the foundry. Bright bubblegum pink toes celebrate freedom from the release of her heels – they look ridiculously good, but fashion hurts, and today is one of the days she misses the basement IT Department and her panda flats – and sifts through the financial data of one of Slade Wilson's offshore accounts that she'd managed to hack.

(The victory fist bump had been trumped by a victory jig in the middle of the foundry, one that had stopped only because of Oliver's hearty laugh – the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard, like church bells and salvation and freedom and everything she's ever wanted for him – after which she'd bowed and he'd looked at her like she was nothing he'd expected and everything he'd hoped her to be.

Her heart had stuttered in her chest a little bit – or perhaps in his, given that she'd handed it to him a long time ago – and for a split second, possibility was a promise.)

She feels the easy silence curl toward curiosity and glances over her shoulder to the corner where he'd meandered about ten minutes before. She knew it frustrated him to have to stay still, to weigh and countermeasure and seek a balance in all the second-guessing with Slade's return and resurrection, and though Oliver still patrolled on a weekly basis, she knew his focus – and therefore theirs – was on trying to stop the man who had devolved into Deathstroke.

The foundry is all silence and shadows, and she finds herself moving among them, going in search of him. She stops short when she sees him curled up on the couch she suspects he's been sleeping on for months, arms crossed and knees pulled toward his chest.

A physical ache centers in her chest like a bulls-eye for his arrows at how small he looked; how much his sacrifice had slowly chipped away at the facades – Arrow, CEO, playboy; jack of all trades and, he thought, master of none – leaving him as vulnerable as she'd felt against their foes. She wants freedom for him, acknowledgment of the penance he's paid since purgatory – though, some days, she's not sure if that refers to Lian Yu or Starling City – salvation and forgiveness.

She wants the peace she feels knowing he's always watching out for her, the most certain thing she knows in a most uncertain time.

She watches the gentle rise and fall of his breaths, wondering if she'll ever see something similar with his walls. And then it strikes her that she _is_ seeing that; he trusts her enough to keep watch; guard the castle to kingdom come. His eyes are fluttering beneath his closed lids, and she wonders what he's dreaming about. She prays to a god she's pretty much forsaken, but will believe in almost as much as she does him if it helps, that it's not nightmares of the island, burdens that she can't bear for him despite her willingness to play Atlas. She hopes it's similar to her own dreams, simple ones like them sitting on a beach, her back to his front, as he takes the island back – takes her with him wherever she goes, this phantom appendage that feels more real than her own some days.

She moves to the storage corner adjacent to the small bathroom and pulls the grey wool blanket they keep there, unfolding it and laying it gently over his sleeping form. Her fingers itch to touch him in a benediction of some kind, an elegy of acknowledgment and thanksgiving for the sacrifices that have so worn him, but she leaves them at her side.

(She will reach for him soon enough, and miraculously – that deliverance she so wanted for him will in actuality be the one he gives himself – he will reach back.

Tempus fugit.

Time flies.)

She still has a few hours of work to do with the ones and zeroes, the code a comfort because she knows she can solve it and that might just save them all in the end. She slides her shoes back on and tiptoes up the stairs toward the club, again staying pressed in the shadows as she makes her way to the private office on the upper level. There's a wistful pang in her chest when she looks for Sara but doesn't see her, that presence on which both she and Oliver so heavily relied, in vows of good times and bad, sickness and health, and makes a mental note to call her tomorrow on the burner number she'd last emailed and ask her how her relationship with an ARGUS doctor named Caroline was progressing.

(She kind of loves that the two strongest people she knows falter when it comes to feelings. It reminds her they too are mere mortals.

She'll love the fact that she's the reason they believe in second chances even more once the time comes.)

She punches in the code to open the electronic lock she'd had installed, shutting the door behind her and heading to the Keurig machine she'd gifted them for Hanukkah, fingers sliding across the multitude of varieties before settling on a Colombian roast. She leans over the table as it starts to brew, eyes slipping shut as weariness starts to seep into her bones.

She gets lost in the smell of coffee and the beat of the music beneath her feet, and doesn't open her eyes until she feels the air shift behind her. His hand comes to the back of her neck and rubs a little bit, and it feels like they've done it a hundred thousand times and expected to do it a hundred thousand more. It feels like surety and certainty, faith and firmness, and her head drops even lower to her chest, a sigh escaping her.

The machine gurgles to a gentle stop, and she straightens. His hand slides to her waist and she turns into him.

There are traces of sleep in the lines on his tired face, and also a hint of questioning as to why he'd woken up without her there, as though he'd expected to.

She smiles and puts a hand over his heart. The compass that always brings her back to him beats its position pointing toward the north star in conviction.

He smiles and squeezes her hip in recognition and acceptance.

(The movement is small but the shift seismic.

Truth takes time.

The clock strikes twelve.)

"Two," she says, handing him the mug she'd intended for herself.

(Intentions and the road to hell, she thinks. Not like she'd ever turn around.

She's wrong.

Intentions will actually lead her to a land not exactly promised but instead dreamed.)

* * *

**12:01**

They are lights and whispers when they finally fall together; gentle in the monumental and hurried in their exploratory. They don't crash together like waves on a rocky shore; instead, as his lips trail a path of possession down her neck, it's a pool of serenity and certainty. Her hands run up and down his broad chest, trailing through the definition and the hard work it took them to get here. He hisses when her fingers sneak across his front, and he arches toward her touch.

(She'd thought she'd use these powers to do bad, bad things.

In actuality, this is the best thing she's ever done.

Will ever do.)

She slides her fingers beneath the black material of his t-shirt, tracing scars and stories she may never know but is okay not learning because they're writing their own history, and his hands do the same, sliding up the expanse of her back beneath her sweater. Their hips slide against each other and it feels like a conflagration when she rolls her hips toward him in experimentation. She can already feel the heat rising from every part of her; it's screaming and tensing, so alive that it makes this real to her.

He pushes her gently against her closed front door, bending his knees a little bit and reaching for her leg, wrapping it around his waist. She thrusts harder this time, and grins at the guttural groan that escapes him. He pulls back and looks at her – she's seen a lot of his expressions, but the hungry look in his eye is one destined to become her favorite – and she just smiles, breathing it – him, _them_, that word she wanted more than almost anything – in. He moves his hands to her front, palming her breasts through the black lace bra she's wearing, and impatiently, she removes his shirt and then hers.

He wastes no time pulling down her bra straps and pressing kisses to her shoulder, and she can't help the moan that escapes her when he suckles on her neck. It doesn't feel like a brand so much as a victory, and she pulls him closer, running her nails down his bare back. He reaches around and undoes the clasp resting against her back, and soon her bra is discarded somewhere in the vicinity of her couch.

He lowers his mouth to one breast, suckling the nipple hard, and she shivers when his stubble brushes against her sternum as he moves to pay the other one equal attention. He smiles against her skin, and it's a revelation. His hand runs up and down her jean-clad thigh as it wraps around his torso, and she fumbles for purchase against the door as the heat pools in her center.

(She's lost when he cups her through her jeans, and she will never want him to find her any more than she does in this moment.)

He pulls back, breathless and pupils wide, and as they do, they say nothing and everything at the same time. She reaches for his hand, and he laces her fingers with hers, and this time it's her leading him. It's synchronicity, and it grounds this newness so that they may get lost in it.

She sits on the bed and looks up at him for a long moment, memorizing the way the moonbeams highlight his face, and he reaches down and gently kisses her, cupping her face and running his thumbs over her cheekbones. It's hello all over again and for the first time.

Her hands move to his belt buckle, and with swiftness he's only seen as her fingers fly across a keyboard, she releases him from the confines of his trousers and boxers, and runs a sure hand beneath his erection. He releases a shaky breath and his eyes slam shut. When she takes him into her mouth, his hand fists in her hair, and as she licks and laves, her brain works overtime, both memorizing the feel of him and remembering that human skin cells replace themselves every three to five weeks, so she will touch new skin then – heal when he's used to hurting.

She can feel him pulsing in her mouth and is ready for him, but he gently pulls her back. His mouth replaces his cock on her lips and she starts scooting back on the bed. He crawls up her body, kissing her languidly despite the air thickening with tension around them, and his hand finds the button on her jeans. She raises her hips as he pulls them down, and he's between her legs so swiftly she almost doesn't register what's happening until his breath is hot against her underwear.

She arches toward him and as always, he meets her halfway, calloused but reverent fingers hooking into the waistband and pulling them down, discarding them in a flash. And then his mouth is on her, tongue teasing around her folds but not diving in or seeking out. He tastes her slowly, eyes raising to meet his, and she runs a hand over the crown of his head.

(He will tell her later that he'd never been looked at with such trust and adoration, and it's that look on her face – not his training or the demons slain, the few victories they manage – that keeps him going.)

She cries out when his tongue hits her clit, a shuddering sigh escaping alongside. He circles intently and she arches in to him, desperate for harder contact. He slides a finger inside her, then two, pumping a ferocious pace that she matches instinctively. Her fists clench in her duvet cover and she rocks against his mouth, panting out his name in encouragement and celebration, and she feels every nerve ending start to tense as she fumbles for elsewhere.

She comes, blinding white oblivion that is the best kind of heaven and an even better kind of hell, arching off her bed and crying his name; for as much as he is possessing her, she now owns every part of him.

He works her through the afterglow and after ridding himself of his pants, slides back up her body. They rest against each other for a long minute, breaths and histories and futures mixing, and he kisses her again as she reaches for her bedside table.

She's deliberately, torturously slow when she rolls the condom down his cock, and he chuckles deeply, finding that spot just below her ear again. She guides him towards her center, and their eyes meet again as he slowly pushes into her.

He rests his forehead against hers as he stretches her, and he just breathes her, them, _this_ in, just as she has done a thousand times before. But this is so much bigger than the two of them; they know it, they've _always_ known it. It feels _real_ .

It feels like truth.

He starts moving inside her, and she wraps her legs around his hips, taking him even deeper. He watches her the whole time as he fucks her, and she encourages him to let go – he is safe here, just as she is with him, always, always, _always_, she sighs against his mouth when he kisses her again – and he reaches between them to run his index finger over her clit.

The sensations are starbursts against her eyelids when they close, and she thinks back to the night in the foundry, hoping the next time he sleeps, he will not dream but remember this, and she's ready to again tumble into the supernova.

(She sees what they are in that moment.

They are beautiful.)

She comes again, and with one, two, three – counting down is now counting ahead – more thrusts, he tenses above her and his orgasm pulses through both of them.

He buries his face in the crook of her neck and stays still for just a minute longer – because minutes are all they have some days, and they know they need to make them count – and ghosts another kiss across her lips as he pulls out.

(The _I love you_s come later, but she knows it even then, even that first time.

Maybe she knew it from "Felicity Smoak? Hi. I'm Oliver Queen.

That's a mystery she doesn't need to solve. It's just a fact.)

* * *

**8:58**

"Three," she says the next morning when she hands him a cup of coffee as he lays leisurely in her bed, eyes smiling as he takes in her form, clad in his shirt and satisfaction.

In everything, there is a time and a place.

Finally, their time is now.

fin


End file.
